From Russia with love - the coolest award in the whole wide world - Sunday 17th to Saturday 23rd of June

Submitted by LocutusOP on Sun, 08/05/2018 - 02:27

With so much bad news going around it is rarely that I get a chance to lead with a positive story, so when one comes along I sometimes feel duty-bound to start with it. That is certainly the case this week. It deals with family, and introduces what turned out to be a rather family-centric entry.

Given the general malaise in the Western world in general and in what can loosely be termed as Latin Rite countries, it should surprise few that the good news come from outside the Western world, from good old Mother Russia. You see, they have what must be the coolest award in the world in Russia titled "The Order of Parental Glory" and it is given to the father and mother who have raised large families well. If my understanding of the award is correct, we have different winners from different regions of Russia, which presumably is why some families will be much smaller than others. Most of the families will have 8 or more children.

Before I proceed I would like you to pause for a bit, and realise just how far ahead Russia is compared to all Western countries when it comes to social cohesion and the promotion of decent societal values.

In the West, and especially since the Second Vatican Council, there has been a well-funded drive to destroy any vestiges of commonality, of common values, of ancestral heritage, of natural existence, of natural law and of course of Christianity in favour of individualism, multiculturalism, mutli-religiosity, atheism and the idea that each and every one ought to decide what is good for himself, and that the state cannot get involved in promoting what is good, unless one can put monetary value on it - and not even that, if what is good monetarily gets in the way of the sexual revolution or zionism, or seems to evoke Christian values.

Can you imagine such an award in Sweden, with the king presenting large families with awards based on the fact that the parents have managed to stay together, conceive , bring to term and raise a large number of children? I certainly can't. For one, the awards hall would probably be full of Somali families (more on that later), with the odd Laestadians, and perhaps one traditional Catholic family once every few years (although I doubt Catholics would ever qualify). Secondly, it wouldn't be long before the king bowed to pressure from feminists and homosexualists to include single women with multiple children from multiple sperm donors (which is what men have been reduced to in Sweden), and of course, sodomites with their artificially-conceived children. Soon afterwards, it would probably devolve to parents with 1-2 children, and perhaps even none, as there would also be pressure to show that marriage has nothing to do with children. It would probably not be long before zoo animals would qualify, and they would probably be more deserving that most of the other recipients.

Swedish society is simply messed up and there is no way in which the king, however inclined he may be, would get away with promoting families, unless it was pseudo-families with the award quickly turning into one big depravity fest, more depraved for every year.

Could you imagine Donald Trump doing it in the U.S.? I can't, for he would probably be accused of one phobia or another, of wanting to destroy the planet with humans, of wanting to chain women to kitchen sinks, of taking his cue directly from Putin with the 'logic' that since Putin encourages large families in Russia, an encouragement of large families in the U.S. is somehow doing Putin's bidding. In fact, the only reason I could see this possibly ever happening is because Donald Trump seems to enjoy nothing more than annoying and agitating leftists, so the jury is out on whether Trump would do this given that it aligns with one of his few passions. That, of course, assumes that Donald Trump would even want to promote family life, a contentious point at best.

In any case, where we can imagine him doing it or not, we ought to be able to count on the condemnation of much of academia and the mass media, given how decadent these institutions have become. By this time, it ought to be certain that a number of Catholic bishops would probably get in the act of condemning it, and maybe even the pope - or whatever Bergoglio is.

Neither can one realistically expect the queen of England or the president of France to do such things, for the very same reasons I have outlined above. The less said about the president of Germany the better. Both Poland and Italy seem to have governments which are willing and even working towards raising the birth rate, but I cannot envision either of their political rulers doing such a thing.

So now we can see just what a wonderful - in the true sense of the word - thing it is when the political ruler of a country gets in front of everyone and declares "We are going to promote the family, and we are going to promote large families!" None of that breeding-like-rabbits and great irresponsibilities talk that Bergoglio has thrown about at the mention of large families.

For all of Russia's ills - and the highest abortion rate in the world has to count as the very worst - it is still a nation of old, with a ruler who is expected to look out for the best interests of the country, not only for the short-term so as to ensure his re-election, but for the long-term so as to ensure the long-term viability and survival of his nation. It is perhaps for this reason that Putin has labelled Russia's demopgraphics the greatest threat to Russia's security and actively worked to increase the birth rate. It is for this reason that he has pushed the Russian Orthodox Church into the forefront of public consciousness and promoted a return to Christianity. It is for this reason that his government has worked to reduce the rate of the killing of unborn children, with the Orthodox Church playing a big role in this.

The Order of Parental Glory allows the Russian president to promote a Christian way of life without even having to mention Christianity. It allows him to lay forth a vision of Russia in which children and the family are at the very centre of its future success. It instills in all fathers and mothers in Russia the knowledge that their hard work of raising families together is appreciated. It is the kind of thing which can only be done by a country which has recovered much of its bearing and it is the kind of thing which makes me certain in the knowledge that the future of Russia is brighter than that of its many Western contemporaries.

Now, Russia is not a Christian country, for no country which allows and even funds the killing of unborn children can claim to be Christian. However, with the re-vitalisation of Christianity in Russia, it is not impossible that the killing of unborn children will be outlawed within a generation. If that happens, then perhaps Russia will finally be able to call itself a Christian country again, and its future prospects will be better still. As it stands though, Poland is probably ahead of Russia in the 'Christian nation' race, in large part thanks to severe restrictions on killing unborn children in Poland, and not least because religious practice - Church attendance, devotionals and the like - is far higher in Poland than it is in Russia.

There can be no doubt though that Russia is on the right track, criticisms of Russia's apparent revitalisation being a KGB ploy notwithstanding. To that Michael Matt responds with the following, and I for one agree with him entirely:

If this is just the Machiavellian machinations of the closet KGB, well, forgive me, but perhaps the world needs more Machiavellian machinations of the closet KGB. At least it's not the Luciferian machinations of Planned Parenthood, the UN and George Soros.

If that's our choice, I think I'd take my chances with this guy, who seems like he may actually have a soul.

Indeed, we must also be careful not to fall into the sin of cynicism. None of us can read hearts, so it is difficult to understand why many feel justified in judging Putin's actions as nothing more than political machinations when the man talks, walks and acts like a Christian in public. What he feels in his heart is known only by Almighty God, and I would certainly not want to defend myself against charges of judgementalism and cynicism before Almighty God having accused a man who has done more for Christianity than any over the last 30 years of insincerity. As it is I pray for his conversion and that of Russia to the Holy Catholic faith, and of NOChurch likewise, and leave it at that.

I had made a mention to Somali families earlier and I would like to elaborate.

I am not familiar with the Islamic view on children, but I would assume that it is similar to the Christian one, i.e., that children are a gift from God. It is common for people in Sweden and elsewhere to complain about Muslims having "too many children" to which my response is always, "What's wrong with that?" "Have they prevented you from having children?" In any case it betrays a humanist mentality in which people are the enemy of good.

In Christian times, children used to be seen as gifts from God, and in fact, next to God's grace, the greatest gift on Earth. Somewhere along the way, most 'Christians' (a term I use loosely in this context) lost that view and adopted the secular-atheist view, that children are a burden. Most bought into the idea that one less child would mean more exotic holidays, or bigger houses, or better shoes. They started using contraception, and soon after abortion became widespread. These societies started dying off to the extent that without immigration virtually all Western countries would already now be experiencing population declines instead of population increases. For some reason, these societies then decided to invite large populations of Muslims, who to their credit had not (presumably) lost the natural instinct of seeing children as gifts from God. As these populations started having more children in a population which was greying, a lot of resentment grew, as people realised that at present rates their countries would be taken over by the immigrants they invited in.

Appreciating children as gifts from God is one of few things that Islam gets right. I for one am not going to condemn Muslims for wanting more children when it is the very thing that Catholics should have been doing all along, and in fact I applaud those who do have big families. It is right and just.

It is 'Christians' who ought to once again embrace a life-giving mentality towards the family and one of the ways they can do that is by abandoning this pretense that modern man knows more than ancient man when it comes to morality, that Christianity can somehow be re-envisioned. Only then will Western societies earn the right to re-Christianise again, and if they fail to do so, then they will die or be so decadent as to be worthy of death (as they already are), Muslim immigrants or not.

As if to underscore the point above, Laura Wood had 2 articles on precisely the point of being open to children. In A Husband Says, ‘No More Children’, a woman wrote to her asking for advice regarding what is sadly a far too common phenonomen, in which one half of the couple is against more children. In her second take on the issue, Procreation and Trust, she got to the core of the problem:

This issue often devolves into legalistic questions about when exceptions are permissible, which obscure the most important issues: trust and love. It’s really very simple. The modern world attacks this simplicity relentlessly.

She added, in the very next paragraph some cautionary notes, to the woman on account of a book she had recommended:

I have not read the book you mention. I am sure it contains worthy points on this subject. I must caution readers, however, that anything produced by a presbyter within the Vatican II Church must be read carefully to avoid the errors of Modernism.

It deserves to be mentioned that Laura Wood is a die-hard sedevacantist, but her warnings about NOChurch texts are well-worth heeding, even when they come not from a simple priest, but from the very pope himself, and I don't even mean Bergoglio.

A very odd thing also took place, with Bergoglio condemning abortion as eugenics and gmarriage/pseudo-marriage. That was the take of Robert Royal in any case, and no, I have not bothered to look up the complete text as it did not have official English translation linked in to the original piece and Bergoglio has wasted enough of my time. As one might almost expect, he was speaking to an "Italian family association". This Bergoglio guy says different and often contradictory things to different groups of different people at different times, often on the same day. It does not surprise me one bit that he would wish to please his crowd by saying something pro-family. As soon as he heads off to yet another of those population-control summits they are so fond of hosting at the Vatican nowadays, he will no doubt say the exact opposite in essence.

What did surprise me is that a seasoned follower of Bergoglio would be taken in by these kinds of shallow stunts, given that Bergs has been doing this kind of stuff for 5 years now. There are, incidentally, no direct quotes condemning pseudo-marriage/gmarriage, only a very sugary portrayal of marriage, so I would have to ask Robert Royal to point out exactly where Bergoglio condemned "fake marriage". In any case, my response was as predictable as Bergoglio's attempts at destroying the Church have been, and in my comment on the day's links for the 19th of June, I wrote:

Bergoglio came out and condemned abortion and gmarriage, however oddly. By his standards, it was a rather strong condemnation.

If form is anything to go by, we can count on him to come up with an extremely scandalous headline over the next week, and given the relative strength of orthodoxy in his statement condemning these evils, we can expect the scandal to be quite grave.

It's what he does, and he has been doing it for quite a while now, and he does it with remarkable predictability and consistency.

This Bergoglio fella makes me feel like a prophet sometimes because I am pleased to inform you that it did not take long before my words proved prophetic (if expecting someone to be at the door at the sound of a doorbell counts as prophetic - so predictable is Bergoglio). Seldom have I been proved so right so quickly, but more on that in later entries...

It's hardly a Novus Ordo week without a new sodomy scandal and Bergoglio's particular contribution to this filth has been in implicating ever-higher ranked clergy. This week it was Cardinal McCarrick's turn, a Bergoglian if ever there was one, and one of those who it is rumoured were most active in lobbying to get a pervert of Bergoglio's mould into the papacy. To nobody's real surprise, we were ifnormed that he has been credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors - some 50 or so years ago - and he was also accused of harassing seminarians. He liked to be called 'Uncle Ted' by the seminarians he lured into sexual liaisons.

This story will run and run, for sure, and well it should. I have few comments on the sexual abuse of minors, an accusation not yet proven, but what was also revealed was that there were at least 2 financial settlements made to former seminarians by dioceses in which McCarrick had been involved. In other words, whereas one may wait for judgement on the pederasty charges, there is no doubt that the man was a homosexual, and yet he was allowed to rise to the level of archbishop and cardinal. Also, it has become quite clear that a lot of people knew this - it was an open secret essentially.

Few people dislike Bergoglio more than I do, but you can understand why virtually the only time I involve myself with defending that distasteful man is when people try to lay all of the blame of NOChurch's various filths at his feet. He has no doubt made things far worse than anybody could have imagined just 5 1/2 years ago, but without doubt he has had a lot of help, and he is far from the only pope at fault - if he is pope that is.

The only people who can hold their heards up high in this are traditionalists, which brings me back to my catchprase that this is everybody's fault except traditional Catholics and me!

That will have to be it for this week, except for the usual award...

This week's Bergoglio victim of the week is neo-Catholic pollyannas. The 'pollyanna' part might be superfluous as neo-Catholics tend to be pollyannas, and seem ever-intent to prove it - the everything is okay because the pope said it is types. It's amazing that anybody can take Bergoglio's condemnation of eugenics seriously, without worrying about what will come next given Bergoglio's tendency to almost always precede awful news with an orthodox diversion.